Dyrnwyn
|status = Inactive due to severe cognitohazard.|first_appearance = Story: The Sword of Selection}} Dyrnwyn is an ancient Legacy Weapon currently in the possession of the Mantle of the Bright Star and wielded by Paladin Tanwyn Angharad. It is the most well known of the Mantle's legacy weapons at present due to it's role in the 2029 terrorist attack on Union Falls, where it was thought to have been irrevocably destroyed. History Rhydderch Hael It is widely believed that the blade that would become Dyrnwyn originated as a normal sword in the hands of a Brittonic king who lived during the sixth century. Legend holds that the blade was enchanted to burn with a white flame when drawn by a man of noble birth, but would burn an unworthy man should he draw it. Whether or not this is true is difficult to discern, as the only race capable of creating channeling devices resilient enough to become Legacy Weapons at the time was the elves, and the Legacy Weapon seen today is clearly a human design. What is more likely is that there was a channeling device called Dyrnwyn at the time, but either it was reforged into a different form sometime between the 6th and 11th centuries or it was destroyed and a successor blade was created based on the legend. The First Crusade The first records of a blade whose description matches the modern Legacy Weapon are in a collection of documents describing the events of the Siege of Antioch. The blade, described as an unusual two handed sword with an ivory hilt, is mentioned briefly during an account of the Battle of Antioch, and was stated to have been "blazing with white flame" as it cut down Kerbogha of Mosul's troops and rallied the starving crusaders. It is generally assumed that the blade was a candidate weapon at most at this point, and modern examination of the blade itself support this. Unlike Durendal which possessed no runes originally, or Ascalon which was created using an early form of Ars Magus, Dyrnwyn was enchanted with a single rune which matches the style of the simple pictographs used by human wizards at the time. Northern Crusades Dyrnwyn and its wielder at the time played a decisive role in the crusades led by Knights Teutonic against the European Elven kingdoms, as it was one of the few powerful Legacy Weapons possessed by the humans at the outbreak of hostilities. Combat doctrine at the time demanded that wizards, and especially Legacy Weapon wielders, engage their counterparts in the opposing army directly, which put the human forces at even more of a disadvantage than they already were. The exception to this trend was the wielder of Dyrnwyn, who achieved several important strategic victories during the first battles of the crusade via engaging and killing several of the Elves' most effective combatants early on. During these engagements, the Elven armies won insofar as they were in control of the field at the end of the battle, but at the cost of disproportionately heavy losses which they were ill able to afford. The simple fact was that any single Elven warrior was more than a match for three or four Human knights, due to their better training, both in physical combat and in magic. However, even the greatest combatant is likely to fall against several weaker enemies attacking simultaneously, and in every engagement the Human armies outnumbered the Elven ones by a wide margin. Combined with Dyrnwyn's blade felling several of their most skilled leaders, often resulting in their own Legacy Weapons being captured intact, and the not inconsequential efforts of the other Human Legacy Weapon wielders to, if victory was impossible, at least damage the weapon of the enemy. As the war went on, and Human armies grew more experienced and as the Elven ones lost more and more troops, Dyrnwyn became less prominent, mainly due to the evolving combat doctrine and the destruction or capture of the majority of the Elven Legacy weapons. Clashes between wielder and wielder occurred less and less frequently, and by the final battles, they were all but completely absent as the Elven strategy shifted from one of retaliation and defense to escape and preservation of the relics they had left. The final battle of the northern crusades was The Battle of the Dover Narrows, where the last remnants of the Elven armies were pinned against the English channel by the Knights Teutonic, their escape route cut off by a Human fleet that had destroyed the boats intended to ferry the refugees, and their remaining relics (including the master runes for the Elven Syllabary). During the resulting battle, the Elven forces were slaughtered, but at a high price, as with nowhere to retreat to and civilians at their backs the Elves refused all offers of surrender. Furthermore, during the battle, Dyrnwyn was sundered and it's wielder slain. The Burning Terror As a symbol of the Human victory and the end of Elven domination in Europe, all Elven Legacy Weapons that would not accept a Human wielder were melted down and forged into new blades for the victorious knights. Dyrnwyn was also reforged anew with metal taken from the Elven weapons, but in the process lost the majority of its acquired spatial memory resonance. It was rechristened Laevateinn, after the blade of flame wielded by Surt in Norse mythology, and given over to the church for the defense of the faithful. This defense took the form of mass slaughter of villages that violated the decree against apostate magecraft, something Laevateinn was suited to due to its incredibly destructive affinity. The Knights, having defeated their racial foe, turned on their own species to ensure the continued supremacy of the church, and for several Laevateinn was all but exclusively used for the purpose of putting heretics (both religious and magical) and their villages to the flame. This earned it the epithet "The Blade of Massacre," and further darkened its reputation beyond the hatred the surviving Annwn Elves held for it. As the Holy Roman Empire declined, and the Knights Teutonic were finally disbanded, Laevateinn passed into the hands of their successor organization, the Knights Illuminor, and out of the public eye. Due to its dismal reputation by this point, few Descendant Weapons were made, and it was generally only used for executions and hunting singular heretics in times of peace, though it was used as extensively as ever in war. During World War I, for example, it lost several wielders to artillery fire and gas attacks. Unfortunately, due to the ineptness of the Ausonian leadership none of said wielders achieved anything of note in return for their sacrifice aside from the mass slaughter of enemy troops in ill planned offensives which contributed little to the overall course of the war. This was a massive waste of an incredibly valuable resource, as Laevateinn was by that point recognized as a Longinius class and several times during the Ausonian retreats it nearly fell into enemy hands. This was not, however, a unique experience. The Knights Illuminor were treated as little more than special forces by the Ausonian military, which they were a part of at the time, and at least one ancient Legacy Weapon was lost in the mud of the trenches. This soured relationships between the Knights and Ausonia, which they had served faithfully since the fall of the Holy Roman Empire. The Second World War came closer than any other event in the history of the Knights Illuminor to destroying the organization, due to the fact that Knights fought on both sides of the conflict and often against each other. The wielder of Laevateinn sided with the faction loyal to Ausonia and thus the Axis, and became a feared foe on the European front, helping to bog down the allied push through Ausonia and later, occupied Europe. In a turn of events only describable as "ironic," the wielder was killed during the firebombing of Dresden, and the blade was damaged significantly by the rubble that fell upon it. It was not recovered until after the war had ended, at which point it was sealed away along with other similarly damaged weapons in the deep vaults, and subsequently forgotten by the rank and file. Rediscovery Destruction Restoration Characteristics